Give Time For Yourself, Your Friends

My tears began in April the year my oldest daughter Lindsay graduated from high school.

Every glimpse of her baby pictures or giggled childhood memory triggered in me a biological chain reaction that began with an accelerated heartbeat, crescendoed to a constricted throat and climaxed with a sobbing dash to the privacy of the bathroom.

In every family photo with the beaming graduate, my eyes are worn and haggard, as if I’d just buried her.

Letting go was much worse than I’d ever imagined, which is why I started preparing early for my youngest daughter Megan’s graduation this year.

“So you’re going to be an empty-nester after this one,” friends say with sympathetic eyes that reveal how glad they are not to be in my shoes.

My mother warned me 20 years ago this day would come.

“Your husband should come first,” she said, sharing the conventional wisdom of her generation. “Your children will grow up and leave you, but he’ll still be there.”

But my husband didn’t need me the way my daughters did.

He didn’t cry in my arms when his heart was broken or beg me to read one more page to him at bedtime. He never looked at me as if I controlled the universe.

That’s how my two daughters stole my heart and soul. Soon after they arrived, my world stopped revolving around me and began revolving around them.

I dropped my friends. At first, a mix of maternal instinct and duty kept me with my children. It didn’t take long before I preferred their company over anyone else’s. They made me laugh. They wanted me to sing.

I fit my job into their schedules, working at home when I could or towing them along to meetings or emergencies I covered for this newspaper.

My social life was their school plays or science fairs, swim meets or softball games. I had no desire to escape them and brave the rest of the world.

Over the years, our lives wove together so tightly that neither daughter could leave without ripping a gaping hole in my fabric.

So I ached when Lindsay left home for college. And I prepared for the future, which is now.

The training was small at first. I joined a committee working on a cause I support. An evening meeting once a month away from home seemed a major commitment.

My daughters had always accompanied me to the grocery store, so I made myself learn to shop alone.

With children, I smiled at other shoppers and chatted. Alone, I pushed my basket through the store with a dogged determination to finish without ever having made eye contact with another human.

Occasionally, I invited my husband along. He was in training, too. Hadn’t we done these chores together happily 20 years ago? In fact, hadn’t we once been complete company for each other?

I searched for activities beyond child-raising we could do together. Gardening. No wonder it’s so popular with the over-40 crowd. Home repair. Only in an emergency. Traveling. If we could afford it.

We instinctively pulled closer together in reaction to the forces that threatened our peace. We resurrected the affection we showed for each other before children. At first it was a little forced, but gradually it became natural, heartfelt and comforting.

I also needed the warm, open company of women — one of the first things motherhood prompted me to toss aside.

Nervously I phoned a friend whose many lunch invitations I had declined. For years I had exercised at lunch so it wouldn’t impose on family time. No one called me for lunch anymore.

She was delighted. No recriminations, just eagerness to get together. Other friends were as forgiving and embracing. I invited, they accepted, we talked until the world seemed right.

I switched exercise time to mornings before work and invited friends to join me — another first. I gained more in mental stimulation than I sacrificed in pure physical exertion.

Megan’s pending departure for college doesn’t scare me as much now. I’ll miss her bearhugs at night and her dinnertime chatter. But there’s life after kids, if I work at it.

7128 or by e-mail at cynthiat@spokesman.com